Each year wildfire affects communities in Canada, resulting in evacuations and, in some cases, loss of homes. Several Canadian wildfire management agencies have initiated mitigation programs aimed at reducing wildfire risk. Successful wildfire mitigation involves both community-level and homeowner action. This paper examines factors that influence wildfire mitigation by homeowners. We draw upon the general hazards and wildfire management literature to develop and test a theoretical model for homeowner wildfire mitigation that includes perceived risk, an evaluation of threat significance and the influence of perceived costs and benefits of mitigation. We used a mail survey to collect data from 1265 residents in six interface communities in the province of Alberta. Results showed a high level of completion for most mitigation activities. A structural equation model provided support for the hypothesis that the evaluation of threat involves weighing the negative effects of mitigation on homeowners’ feelings of connectedness to nature and the cost of mitigation with the positive influences of fear, a sense of responsibility and perceived effectiveness of mitigation. Considering the total effects, threat assessment had the greatest effect on mitigation by homeowners, followed by perceived effectiveness of mitigation in reducing damage and not having financial resources for mitigation.

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Two experiments investigated the conventional practice of combining social and tangible rewards as a compound reinforcer in operant training procedures for mentally retarded persons. In the first experiment, there were no significant differences in acquisition of a color discrimination between subjects receiving combined social and food reinforcement and those receiving only one of the component reinforcers. In subsequent extinction, subjects who had received social reinforcement on its own responded more than combined reward subjects, who did not differ in extinction responding from food reward alone subjects. In the second study, higher rates of a simple manipulative response were established during training with food reinforcement alone and with combined reinforcement than with social reinforcement alone. Nevertheless, resistance to extinction was again superior after social reinforcement alone than after the food or combined reinforcement. This was the case despite generalization decrements from acquisition contingencies to extinction being kept to a minimum in this second study by the use of noncontingent reinforcement as the extinction procedure. Neither experiment, therefore, found any beneficial effects of combining the rewards, either in acquisition or in subsequent extinction.

In this collection of pieces, several indexers of varying levels of experience (the four members of the ‘Yellow Spot’ guest editorial team) share their background employment experiences, their initial reasons for wanting to train in indexing, and their thoughts on their early indexing projects.